Wow. I was aware I had dropped the ball there for a while, but didn’t realize it had been almost 2 whole months.

That changes today. I’m getting things back on track a step at a time. This is the first step.

I’ve been thinking a lot about my high school years the last few weeks, particularly because of the recently resolved student strike at the UPR (the secondary school I attended was part of the University system), and one thing that came to mind was a sort of unofficial call to arms my class had. So I started doodling and sketching– something I hadn’t done in quite a while, and came up with what would eventually become this:

Originally I had planned on doing something related to the Doomsday clock (something about “tax day, deadlines, that sort of thing), but scrapped it doing the “idea” stage. Then I got involved with prepping for a phone interview, and next thing you know, we’re on Sunday and I haven’t done anything for a couple of days. So, once again I need to catch up.

Growing up in the late 70s/early 80s in PR meant that, more likely than not, you were exposed to a lot of anime (Japanese animation), way before it would become fashionable in the US. Local tv was inundated with all sorts of Japanese imports– among them an animated, serialized version of Johanna Spyri’s Heidi, Captain Harlock, Candy Candy, Battle of The Planets, and a slew of mecha.)

So my attempt at catching up has been less than successful, and at this point, I’m about a week behind. So, without further ado, here’s the CSED that corresponds to 3/7.

Some thoughts on the CSED:

I picked up The Kentucky Headhunter’s Electric Barnyard at the library the other day– purely on a nostalgic whim (my uncle had made me a copy on tape a lo00ng time ago). On the album there’s a cover of Norman Greenbaum’s “Spirit In The Sky”. I’ve always dug the original’s fuzzy guitar riff, and I find it amusing and oddly ironic that a Jewish man would be singing about having a “friend in Jesus”– apparently, as I understand it, he added “Jesus” to the lyrics because he felt it worked better in the song. Go figure.

So, as of today (March 9), I’m still behind by a couple of days. It’s my fault, really. I set a challenging goal for March, and it’s proving hard to keep up. But I’m determined to catch up on these in the coming couple of days. In the meantime, here’s today’s piece.

Some thoughts on today’s CSED:

The 80s were, in my opinion– musically speaking– a schizophrenic decade. On the one hand you had pop music being put out by the likes of Culture Club, New Edition, Cindy Lauper, and yes, Michael Jackson. Somewhere on the other end of the spectrum you had rock and metal, with hair metal becoming quite popular thanks to bands like Bon Jovi, Poison, Ratt, and countless others.

And then, in ’87, Guns n’ Roses hit the scene, and things changed.

So, I decided to use the band’s debut album as a jumping-off point. Here, then is my (rather quickly cobbled together) take on what has, over the last 20+ years, become a rock and metal classic.